Museums and Museum Groups -- STOP COVERING YOUR A*S!

Why don't ALL museum job ads have salary ranges included?  Why don't ALL Museum Groups that host museum job ads require salary ranges be included in those ads?  The museum profession talks a good game concerning gender pay equity, fair pay, and diversifying the museum workforce. But talk, as they say, is cheap.  I expect more, and better, from the museum world than high-minded platitudes, so I want Museums and Museum Groups to:

STOP COVERING YOUR ADS!

Back in October last year, I wrote a blog post over my dismay in finding many (but not all!) museum groups still allowing ads for unpaid internships and job postings without salary ranges to be publicized through their websites and publications. I contacted the leaders of AAM, AAASLH, and NEMA to find out why they are still "covering their ads" and either got no definitive response or got a list of excuses ranging from "not wanting to upset museum members" to the concern that if salary range requirements were instituted, that museums would take their job postings "elsewhere."

I'll state again that I expect more, and better, from the museum world than such weak responses, especially when requiring salary ranges on job postings is such a tiny, tiny difficult step toward resolving pay and diversity inequities in museums, compared to the REALLY HARD steps the museum profession says it wants to take toward a fairer and more representative museum workplace.

The good news is that there are museum organizations that do require that salary ranges be included in museum job ads, and for that, they should be recognized and congratulated. The New York City Museum Educators Roundtable (NYCMER) has such a requirement and the website Museum Jobs (a project of Museum Hack) also requires that every posting includes salary ranges.  Laura Huerta Migus, the Executive Director of the Association of Children's Museums (ACM) is also in the vanguard of museum groups by requiring salary ranges for job ad postings.  Laura was kind enough to share her thoughts with me on this subject and has graciously allowed me to quote her words here:

This is also a best practice that we’ve been adhering to for ACM’s own job postings since 2014. We don’t publish any job announcements without the actual salary range.  This has been a very important strategy, not just from an equity perspective, but also as an employer. In particular, it helps us understand if the job description (including skill requirements) matches the salary and if we need to reconsider the job description and/or minimum required skills. This has happened more than once over the past four years that I have been at ACM. For example, for our communications manager listing, we worked from the existing job description and published the salary and the respondent pool was all over the map, from new college grads to seasoned communications professionals who were seeking to take this position as a contract for their personal business. This wide spectrum of responses told us two things: 1) the salary was not high enough to attract the mid-level professional we were looking for, and 2) the job description did not have the right balance of responsibilities to appeal to the kind of candidate that we needed. So, we took down the job description, rewrote it, adjusted the salary, and reposted. The result is that we got a great (and diverse) candidate pool with the level of experience that we were looking for, and ultimately made a great hire. That said, we do have work to do to sustain a strong staff and be a competitive employer, but it is work we are making progress on for sure!

So why make such a big deal about a (seemingly) small thing like salary ranges on museum job ads?  I'll stop here and refer you to the influential "Nonprofit AF" blog and a post by Vu Le about what he calls "Salary Cloaking." Le outlines many reasons why not posting salary ranges is just plain bad business for non-profits, but let me just pick out a few of his salient points:

• It wastes everyone’s time

• It perpetuates the gender wage gap

• It starts a relationship off on a lack of trust and transparency

I really believe the museum world can do better than this, so I am going to contact (again!) the leaders of the large national museum groups that are lagging behind in requiring that salary ranges be included on museum job ad postings.  I'm going to send them a link to this blog post and ask them (again!) to change their policies and procedures and STOP COVERING THEIR ADS! 

I hope you will take a minute to contact the folks below and the leaders of other museum organizations you are associated with to let them know what you think.


PLEASE EMAIL THESE MUSEUM LEADERS

American Alliance of Museums (AAM):  Laura Lott

American Association for State and Local History (AASLH): John Dichtl

New England Museum Association (NEMA): Dan Yaeger


Let's resolve this one small issue AND start tackling some of those bigger employment issues in the museum world!


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One Way to Address the Museum "Pay Problem" (TODAY!)

Although many museums and not-for-profit organizations have underpaid (and it could be argued, undervalued) their staff for years, there has been a recent flurry of online articles bemoaning this fact --- including here on the ExhibiTricks blog, at AAM's Alliance Labs blog, and at the Nonprofit: AF blog.

"Why all this sudden interest?" you may ask.  "Nobody goes into museum or non-profit work for a big payday."

That's true, to an extent, but deliberately inadequate pay contributes to the museum world's lack of diversity, and, for organizations that like to place their high-minded social credentials front and center, it is just downright demeaning and unfair to hard-working staff not to pay them a living wage.

So what to do?  (Besides the usual rationalizing and hand-wringing and pearl-clutching so common in the non-profit world?)

HERE'S MY SIMPLE SUGGESTION: Refuse to publish help wanted ads from museums and other cultural institutions that do not list clear salary ranges in their job postings, or from those organizations that offer unpaid "internships."

That's it.

Personally, if I ran the circus, I would also not accredit such organizations or let their representatives present at professional conferences, but let's start with baby steps and something simple(r) to implement.

If you'd like the museum world to start cleaning up its classified ads, and by extension its pay problem, then I urge you to email and speak with the leaders of every museum organization you know.  I've listed a few organizations and their leaders (with links to their emails) below to get you started.

You could just write something like: "As a member concerned with fair pay and diversity in the museum field, I ask you to stop accepting job ads that do not list clear pay ranges or ads for unpaid internships."  (Feel free to cut-and-paste this text directly into your own email.)

I am disheartened that we are losing emerging and diverse members of the museum profession because of poor pay and bogus unpaid work situations.  So let's stop hiding and rationalizing and start doing something.  I've just sent emails to everyone listed below, won't you join me?


PLEASE EMAIL THESE MUSEUM LEADERS

American Alliance of Museums (AAM):  Laura Lott

New England Museum Association (NEMA): Dan Yaeger


UPDATE: Hooray! ASTC, ACM, and AASLH all now require salary ranges on job postings!

But AAM and NEMA still do not, so contact Laura Lott and Dan Yeager and ask them to "catch up" to the rest of the museum world.



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Follow the money . . . to museum diversity?

Officials in New York City recently announced a plan that ties funding of cultural institutions to demographic information about staff and board membership in an effort to address ongoing issues of “equity and inclusion.” 

I really hope this plan moves the needle on systemic problems in the museum industry like inadequate salaries and the woeful lack of diversity in staffing and audiences. There has been lots of sincere and well-meaning talk about improvements to museums for over 30 years, but little lasting action.

Because the NYC plan ties improvements to funding, I really believe it has a chance to succeed, since nothing gets the attention of administrators and boards like MONEY!

What do you think?  Have you seen similar plans in action?  Let us know in the "Comments" section at the end of this post.


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Google Field Trip and "Free" Museums

Should all museums be "free"?  That is, charge no admission to anyone who shows up at the front door?  (And I don't mean the slightly bogus "pay what you wish" policy that many museums employ... that's still really intimidating for many "novice" museum goers.)

I've been thinking about this a lot as I am visiting many, many museums during a West Coast trip.  Usually a combination of my AAM card and/or my business card and/or turning on the 150 watt charm gets me into the particular museum for free.  Not always, but the vast majority of the time. But that works for me, not just anyone who shows up at the front desk.

I recently downloaded an app called Google Field Trip onto my iPhone.  It uses your location to suggest nearby cultural or historical or theatrical attractions that you might like to visit or explore.  As a bonus,  Google has partnered with some museums (mostly right now on the East and West Coasts) to offer free admission to the highlighted venue.   So this weekend as I was ambling aroung Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, my iPhone pinged me to let me know that I was near the de Young Art Museum and could get free admission there by showing the front desk staff my Google Field Trip screen.  Cool right? Who doesn't like free stuff?

Inevitably friends or neighbors who know I work in the museum business will say, "I love it that all the Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC are free."  Of course, I explain they're not really free since our taxes help to support the Smithsonian, but to most non-museum people it still shakes down the same way --- they think museums cost too much, and they would prefer (and practically expect) that museums should charge no admission.

Elaine Gurian has made a passionate case for free museum admission (you can check out her thoughts on her website.)  Her basic premise (which I agree wholeheartedly with) is that free museum admission will build broader and more diversified museum use.

On the other hand, it costs money to run and staff museums, so where will that "missed" admissions revenue be made up?  Jamie Glavic of the Museum Minute blog has written an equally passionate post defending the 9/11 Memorial Museum's decision to charge admission.

It's tricky isn't it?  The Web and smart phones and streaming technologies have given us an expectation that we can latch onto any kind of content for free, whenever and wherever we like.  Does that mean that museums should become "free" also?


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